D. Compton - The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe

But she got up again neatly enough when I helped her.

Halfway up the side of the second field he groped around and stopped.

‘We’re out of the sun here,’ he said. ‘Is it a high hedge? Would I be noticed if I stayed put?’

‘I’ll wait with you if you’re tired.’

‘It’s not that. I don’t know your first husband. He doesn‘t know me. It would be better if you went on up alone.’

‘I’d rather you came with me.’ He’d said he’d look after her. He’d promised he’d look after her. ‘I can’t do this alone. Please come with me.’

Do what alone? Visit an old friend? Talk over old times? Or perhaps at last find someone she could fairly blame… He went on with her up the side of the field and over the gate at the end. She placed his hands and he climbed it easily.

They were among the trees now, the wide rambling buildings of the school only a few hundred yards away, beyond the edge of the copse and across a graveled drive. Nothing moved. It was holiday time, the school empty. She leaned against a flimsy silver birch, gathering her strength. Then she went on between clumps of bluebells, Roddie close behind her. On the drive she paused. In front of her was a block of locked classrooms. She turned right and followed the drive around the side of a three-story laboratory unit. Big brass scales stood in the windows, and things in glass bottles. The drive widened into a turning space with grass in the middle and a tall aluminum abstract sculpture streaked with birdlime. She wondered if she should tell Roddie everything she was seeing. Where did one start?

‘It’s a nice school,’ she said inadequately. ‘There’s… there’s a sort of swooping roof over the main part and then flat blocks on either side. It’s mostly blue. A green-blue. Turquoise really…’ She was so bad at it. ‘There are fir trees with swings on long ropes from the lower branches…’ She trailed off.

‘I can smell the fir trees.’

But she was seeing into the deep shadows under them. She lowered her voice. ‘And Gerald’s standing under one of them. He looks very much the same. He thinks we haven’t seen him. He’s making up his mind what to do.’

She led Roddie on across the gravel, toward the main entrance. The Gerald she remembered liked to enter any situation with his thoughts in order. They went together up the shallow steps to the main entrance. The door was locked. Roddie stood quietly beside her, learning patience. She peered through the door’s glass panel at the polished corridor within and waited for Gerald to make up his mind. Finally he did.

‘Don’t ring the bell.’ Behind her his feet approached across the gravel. ‘The porter won’t — there’s nobody to answer.’

She caught the correction. What wouldn’t the porter do? She turned. ‘I’d forgotten how tall you were, Gerald.’

‘It’s been a long time.’

She nodded. ‘Six years… What won’t the porter do, Gerald?’

He looked from Roddie to her and back again, and didn’t answer.

‘Gerald, this is Roddie.’

‘I thought it had to be.’

Roddie held out his hand but Gerald stayed at the bottom of the steps, staring up. ‘Please don’t be awkward,’ Katherine said.

Roddie took his hand back. ‘If he’s been watching the show and he cares about you,’ he said, ‘you can hardly blame him.’

She held tightly onto his arm. ‘Do you care about me? Do you care about me, Gerald?’

Suddenly Gerald moved and broke up the tableau. He turned and began to walk briskly away. ‘I’d rather you weren’t seen,’ he said. ‘My part is around here. Please hurry. The police came early this morning — I was to get in touch with them the moment you turned up…’

He walked fast, so that she had difficulty in following. Roddie stumbled, nearly fell. Ahead of them Gerald disappeared through a gate in a high woven fence. When she reached the gate she saw beyond it a dappled green garden bright with yellow spring flowers and the fallen, drifting petals of a cherry tree. She went in, drawing Roddie through after her. Gerald was waiting behind the gate and closed it. ‘You look terrible, Kath. Really terrible. What can I get you?’

The courage that had sustained her was suddenly all used up. She staggered and sank down, just where she was, on the grassy random stones of the path. Roddie stood beside her, one arm half-raised, quietly warding off.

When Tracey burst into the office she saw Vincent taking a chicken and mayonnaise sandwich from a piled plate on his desk. Beside the plate were two paper cups of coffee. Another man was standing by the window, his forehead pressed against the glass. Both men were physically relaxed. Neither was calm or composed.

‘I can see there’s no news,’ she said.

Nobody contradicted her. Vincent finished chewing his current mouthful and swallowed ‘I gave orders that you weren’t to be allowed up here.’

‘The girl on Reception has a husband. She feels about him the way I feel about mine.’

The man at the window had turned. ‘I suppose it’s all over the papers,’ he said.

‘And the lunchtime news. How else would I know? You’d hardly expect our Vincent to tell a girl a thing like that. I’m only Roddie’s wife, that’s all.’

Vincent took another sandwich. ‘You’re not his wife. Perhaps you forget.’

‘Like I said once before, someone has to pick up the pieces.’

The other man straightened and came toward her. ‘I’m Dr Mason,’ he said ‘Mrs Mortenhoe was, still is, my patient. Believe me, we’re doing everything we can. I have to get to her very soon, within the next few hours. Otherwise it’ll be too late and she’ll die.’

‘How can you save her? I thought…’

Vincent looked up, came in a little too sharply. ‘No doctor gives up hope, Tracey. Naturally Dr Mason will do what he can. Which is why we’re doing our damnedest to find her. To find them both.’

‘You mean you’ve paid for a death and now you’re worried sick you won’t be there.’

But he wouldn’t be needled. ‘You’ll admit we paid handsomely, Tracey.’ He picked a shred of chicken from between his front teeth and stared at it. ‘You can hardly blame us for being concerned.’

Dr Mason moved convulsively. ‘No. No, I disassociate myself from that attitude completely. I can save her. If we find her in time I can—’

‘You delude yourself, my dear Doctor. She has a terminal condition. I heard you tell her so myself.’

Tracey looked at the two men. Power was being wielded: the whole force of Vincent’s personality, and something more besides. She knew his ways, his ruthlessness. Whatever their difference, the doctor would never have been a match for him… Roddie, for all his courage and imagination, had never been a match for him either. She was there because Roddie needed her. Because any activity was better than waiting at home by the TV. Because she had felt she would be nearer to him there in Vincent’s office than anywhere else. Now she saw there were other threads, complications she refused to guess at.

‘Whatever you’ve done so far to find them,’ she said, ‘you must do it again. There’ll be something you missed. You must go through it all again.’

‘Must? My dear Tracey—’

‘You’re tough, Vincent. I wonder if you’re that tough. I wonder if you wouldn’t rather know afterward that you’d done everything you could.’

He looked at her sideways. ‘For the sake of the sponsors?’

‘For the sake of any damn person you like.’

He sighed, wiped his greasy fingers on his handkerchief, and reached for the telephone.

We sat in basket chairs, and ate salad out of wooden bowls. Or at least I did. I appreciated Gerald’s thoughtfulness — I could scoop around with my fingers and not spill all that much over the sides. I’d never thought before how blind men ate. A wooden bowl and fingers seemed by far the best idea. And a glass on the ground beside me with wine in it they told me was white. I mean, it had to be, on a headmaster’s lawn, chilled like that, and with salad. And with the sun warm on my face.